Wednesday, 19 November 2014

LBCs, or Lazy bastard customs, can sometimes be as fun to make as customs that require paint on every square inch and can be at least as challenging too.

When the 50th Anniversary line was released, I was happy to get another shot at the classic 25th anniversary VAMP tooling. The urban color pattern is an interesting look and I bought an extra set to remove the doors and roof and swap out the missile rack for the pom pom gun. Since I had to paint the gun support black, the VAMP is not a true LBC, but it is pretty close.

Duke came about when I was looking for away to re-purpose my spare Flint. It is a super simple head and gear swap, but it adds to my growing Joe urban assault squad. I still need to repaint the flesh on his forearms.

Tuesday, 18 November 2014

I've been on a bit of a Special Teams kick lately. Between Night Force week and 50 Shades of Blowtorch, I've rekindled my fascination for them.

One character was created specifically for the Tiger Force team: Skystriker. He was made up of Wild Weasel and Thunder parts and was released with the Tiger Rat.

Tiger Force was also released overseas and even saw the addition of new characters that were not available in North America. Airtight, or Ar Puro as he was known in Brazil, was actually released by the GI Joe club in their figure subscription service a couple of years of years ago. Since I never bought him, I made my own.

These customs are not revolutionary, but I have had them on my to-do pile for a while and it feels good to finally get them done.

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

Sam (our resident packaging expert extraordinaire) surprised us and sent along an added bonus. Aside from his stellar work on all the packaging mock-ups and artwork for Night Force Week, he created custom sticker sheets to go with each vehicle!

Sunday, 2 November 2014

I like Spirit. I'm not a die hard
Spirit fan by any means, but he's probably in my top ten. I hadn't realized it,
but upon looking, I've done a Spirit custom every year since 2012. (Regular,
air commando, and now Night Force).
I tried to go with a look that is easily copied, doing absolutely no
modifications on the figure. It's just parts swapping and paint. I struggled
with the webgear for a bit, until deciding on the Outback vest, giving him a
unique look that isn't usually associated with Spirit. Getting the skin tones
to match and keep the figure fully poseable wasn't going to be an option, so I
went with the painted face route, which has been seen a couple times on some
great customs. I'm very happy with how he turned out.

Airborne by Oreobuilder

Airborne was one of my first Joes and has remained a favorite of
mine over the years. The Night Tomahawk was the first thing I wanted to do for
this project (I had more than enough spares since the TRU clearance sale), so
making a Night Force Airborne seemed like a natural fit. It was a good
opportunity to update the recipe a bit with some modern parts and give the
chopper a crew.

Night Terror w. Hot-Seat
by Dusty79

This started out as just an idea to add some other Night Force
vehicle to the lineup and I was all for it, but in a project like
this, that turned out to be tougher than it sounds. We didn't want to
simply do a remake of a Night Force vehicle done by Hasbro and we wanted it to
be something unique that Hasbro has not reissued multiple times. Then you
have to think about is the vehicle compatible with modern Joes and by the time
you sort all that out it makes it pretty tough to find a vehicle that fits and
I hit a few dead ends. After combing through yojoe.com and much thought,
Bucky and I decided on the Raider. It is a vehicle that has plenty of
space in the cockpit for modern figures, it has not been reissued, and it was
never a Night Force vehicle. The fact that it had a driver that had
not been updated was a bonus.